


Uncommon Grounds

by benicemurphy



Series: Coffee Shop AU/Age Gap AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Keith (Voltron), Flirting, M/M, barista problems, customer service woes, exaggerated age gap, silver fox shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21154652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benicemurphy/pseuds/benicemurphy
Summary: Keith just wants one day off —one single day offfrom his shitty job — but of course, that can’t happen.At least there are always two people who know how to put a smile on his face.





	Uncommon Grounds

**Author's Note:**

> This piece focuses heavily on the coffee shop AU aspect, but this will likely become a series with future fics that focus more heavily on the development of Keith and Shiro’s relationship and their (exaggerated) age gap.
> 
> For now, please enjoy this little somethin’ somethin’ for Keith’s birthday! <3

Keith wakes up in the absolute worst way possible: to the sound of his phone ringing at 8 AM _sharp_ with a call from none other than Lance, to whom he regrets giving his number every single day.

He mutes the ringer and lets it go to voicemail. No sooner has the call ended that another one blares through.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Keith mumbles aloud to himself. He mutes it again and lets it ring out, convinced that this will somehow stop Lance from being the world’s worst coworker — and yes, that’s even compared to Rolo and Nyma.

The call ends and immediately, Keith is assaulted with message notifications.

_Wake up!_

_U have work today_

_No I don’t_, Keith sends back. He knows for a fact he’s not on the schedule today; he had double and triple checked before he left work yesterday because there had been some confusion about his schedule.

_You’re on the schedule_, Lance sends. Attached is a picture of the hourly breakdown for today, and yep, sure enough, there’s Keith: 8 AM.

Keith barely resists the urge to scream. It’s supposed to be his day off, damn it. He had big plans for the day, not a single one of which involved getting within a mile of his god forsaken workplace.

But he’s on the schedule for some unknown but probably incredibly stupid reason (like someone forgot that he had requested this day off specifically and that it had been approved), and he needs the money, and he knows he doesn’t have any good reason not to go other than that he just doesn’t want to, so he drags himself out of bed, filled with dread, and takes his sweet time getting ready.

If they want to fuck up his schedule, they can deal with him being late.

He doesn’t tell Lance this, of course— he just puts his phone on Do Not Disturb mode, washes his face, and sniffs around for some clean clothes. He doesn’t even bother with his usual uniform, which desperately needs to be washed after wearing it for four days in a row (he was going to wash it today, but that’s obviously not happening now) and opts for his favorite black skinny jeans and a black thermal henley. They’re both a few years old and probably a size too tight since he bulked up in college, but they’re comfortable and close enough to dress code to get by. Usually he wouldn’t consider either of these options work appropriate (and neither would the employee handbook), but who gives a fuck? No one ever gets in trouble for anything, anyway.

He brushes his teeth and pulls a brush through his hair before ultimately deciding to just pull it back into a ponytail and finally sets off on his walk. It only takes ten minutes to get to the shop on foot — one thousand percent of the reason he decided to take the job at this particular coffee shop rather than any of the other fifteen nearby — and he’s clocked in by 8:47 AM. Already he’s mourning the loss of his day and his dreams of actually doing something that makes him happy for once.

When he steps behind the counter, he doesn’t even bother with the hat and apron. He’s going to stand at the register and take orders all day, and everyone else can do the rest. Normally he prefers making drinks so that he doesn’t have to talk to any customers, and also because he’s the fastest thanks to Lance’s constant complaining and Rolo’s utter lack of urgency in anything he does; but today he doesn’t feel like getting covered in milk and caramel sauce or sweating his ass off in front of the ovens.

Despite his annoyance with literally everyone today, there are up sides to working with this particular crew, too. He can always trust the two of them to show up for their shifts, unlike the majority of the staff, and they each have qualities that make them good coworkers.

Lance, for how much Keith wishes he would just shut the fuck up sometimes, is a good worker. He worries constantly over what people think of him, which means he doesn’t pull disappearing acts like most everyone else Keith works with. His fifteens are actually fifteens, his thirty is actually thirty, and if he’s in the back instead of out front, Keith knows he’s actually back there prepping the sauces and whipped creams for the next day, not getting paid to play on his phone, _Nyma_.

Rolo obviously doesn’t give a shit about the job, but he’s chill. It can be fun to watch him and Lance bicker, but although Keith works well with both of them individually, he sometimes prefers working with Rolo alone because their personalities match better. Rolo does his job, and even though his bathroom breaks sometimes take twenty minutes, the tradeoff is that he almost never bothers to take his fifteens and doesn’t chatter incessantly in Keith’s ear about how much his stomach hurts or his money problems or how much he doesn’t feel like going to the gym every single day, _Lance_.

Rolo is also reasonably perceptive. When Keith walks in, Rolo gives him a nod and steps aside to give him the register. Lance, however, king of obliviousness, starts in on him immediately.

“Oh thank you Keith, thank you. It was just gonna be the two of us today because _of course_ Lotor called out, and you know when Nyma gets here at three she’s not actually going to do anything, which means I would have been by myself for an hour and a half until I could go home and probably wouldn’t even get to take my last break.”

“Uh huh,” Keith mumbles. A customer walks up to the counter, eyes glued to the menu above Keith’s head. “Hi,” he says to the girl.

“Hey,” she says back, distractedly. “Um, can I get a—”

“And I have a huge headache, like it’s so bad, you don’t even know.”

“Oh that sucks,” Keith deadpans and tries to pointedly focus harder on the customer trying to order.

“—large, please?”

Keith sighs. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Caramel apple cider with only two pumps of cinnamon?”

“And you wanted that in a large?” Keith asks.

“Yes please.”

Keith keys it in and hands the cup to Lance to hopefully get him to make the drink and stop talking.

“That’ll be four dollars and sixty-two cents,” he says.

The girl fishes around in her purse for a very crumpled five dollar bill, hands it over, and then wanders away.

“Did you want your change?” Keith calls.

She’s already looking at her phone and doesn’t even seem to hear him. He sighs and puts the change off to the side in case anyone needs it later.

The day goes on like that. It’s unremarkable, for the most part. A few customers make him smile with their kindness or make a joke that Keith genuinely finds funny. Others make him quietly seethe as they bark orders at him and seemingly don’t realize that he’s an actual human, not a coffee robot. He gets petty with those customers, refusing to say another word until they pay and walk away. He pointedly does _not_ tell them to have a nice day.

Even with the usual pocketful of rude customers, everything is generally okay through the first half of his shift. The same crew worked yesterday, which means that everything on the menu was prepped and is actually available today, which means less for customers to complain about. There are a few snide comments about “how expensive it’s gotten” (news flash: it’s always been expensive) to which Keith just agrees and laments how crazy it is that prices just keep going up.

“Not like it matters to you, since you get everything for free,” one man says accusingly. Keith has to force himself not to scowl.

“Actually, we have to pay for anything we eat or drink. We’re not allowed to take things for free.”

The man stops stuffing twenties back into his wallet and blinks up at Keith. “Really? They don’t even let you get a free coffee or a sandwich for lunch?” The change in demeanor is nearly comical, but the way the man says it as if it should be common sense for employees to get benefits from their workplace brings out Keith’s righteous indignation.

“Nope,” he says, popping the p. “Not even a coffee. We pay full price, too.”

The man resumes packing away his wallet and simply says, “Wow. That sucks.” He drops a dollar bill on the counter and walks away.

Keith takes the dollar and slides it into his pants pocket. They’re technically not allowed to take tips, but again, no one ever gets in trouble for anything, and also no one will ever notice, considering the manager is notoriously oblivious to everything that happens in his place of business.

Lance takes his lunch first, leaving Keith and Rolo alone. It’s a nice respite from the chatter. Keith admits that he’s possibly being too hard on Lance today for just _being who he is_, but Lance is also the reason he’s awake and here right now on the one day he actually requested off, so he doesn’t feel too bad about it. Plus, Lance will get over it.

There’s a small rush almost immediately, because of course there is, and that’s when Keith’s day starts to break down.

Six customers into the line, he already hears someone off to the side complaining about how Rolo made their drink. Rolo may be a slow worker, but he knows what he’s doing, and he almost never makes the drinks incorrectly.

“I can’t even taste the caramel in this,” the woman is saying. “I asked for caramel.”

“You asked for half the normal number of pumps,” Rolo says back. “But I can add more.”

Keith turns his attention away from the customer in front of him to see how this will play out. He shouldn’t, but it’s always fun to watch people being really fucking stupid. He remembers this woman’s order — she had given him attitude at the register, too.

“I wanted this with half a pump of caramel. How much did you put in there?”

“Two pumps, so actually more than what you asked for, I guess,” Rolo says with a shrug.

Keith pipes up from where he’s standing. “You asked for half caramel, so that’s what I wrote. Sorry about that.” He’s not sorry, and she can probably tell.

“Well I can’t taste it,” she says. “I want my money back.”

“We can just put more caramel in there,” Rolo says. “If you want more, it’s not a problem.”

She contemplates for a second, then hands the cup over. “Fine. But if I still can’t taste it, I want a refund.”

Rolo takes the cup and adds two more pumps, bringing it up to the default amount of flavoring for a drink that size. He hands it back, and he, Keith, and the customer in front of the counter watch as she takes a drink.

“This is much better,” she says snidely. “Now it actually tastes like something. You should really tell people that when they order.”

She does not say thank you, but she leaves the store, which is really as much as they can ask for.

Rolo rolls his eyes and moves on to the next drink. Keith turns back to his customer to resume taking orders.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “What can I get you?”

“Small coffee, three pumps of pumpkin syrup and lots of room, medium.”

Keith blinks for a second, trying to digest that. “Small or medium?” he asks.

The question seems to confuse her. She thinks for a second, then finally says, “Just make it a large.”

He shrugs and punches in a large coffee before she can change her mind. “Two-eighty-four,” he says.

The girl pays, thanks Keith once he’s handed her the coffee, and leaves. The next few minutes pass just fine until someone tries to order a strawberry banana smoothie.

“We’re out of the strawberry banana,” Rolo calls. Keith relays the message to the customer.

“No you aren’t,” the man says. He smells pungently of cigarette smoke, and the angrier he gets, the stronger the smell seems to get, like it’s feeding off of his rancid mood. “I just saw someone walk out of here with one.”

“That was the last of what we had,” Keith explains, as if that’s something that really needs to be explained. “Sorry about that. We also have mango, berry blast, and—”

“No, I don’t want none of those,” the man grouses. “How can you be out of strawberry banana?”

Keith hates this fucking question. What do people expect the answer to be when they ask it? What the fuck is the point of arguing? He already feels a headache coming on, and his patience is much thinner today than it usually is.

“A lot of people ordered it, I guess.”

“Are you gonna get more?”

“I assume so.”

“This is unbelievable.” The man continues to complain, despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to want Keith to actually do anything to solve his problem short of hand-blending him a strawberry banana smoothie with some fresh produce from the grocery store next door. “I’ve been standing in this line for fifteen minutes, and now you’re telling me you’re out of the only thing I wanted to get?”

“I guess so. Sorry,” Keith says again.

“Unbelievable. Who’s your manager?”

Keith is all too happy to throw the manager under the bus. “His name is Derek. He’s in his office right around the corner if you’d like to go speak with him.”

“No, I want you to go get him and bring him out here so I can tell him how rude you’ve been to me and how much the service here sucks.”

Keith smiles and gestures to the long line of people getting irritated behind him. “We’re in the middle of a rush right now, so I can’t leave. If you’d like to wait until the line dies down, I can get him for you then.”

He knows there’s no chance this guy will stick around. Judging by the length of the line, it’ll be another half hour at least.

“Yeah, I think I will,” the guy says. “Fucking unbelievable,” he mumbles as he waddles away.

Keith waits until he’s able to unclench his fists, then calls after the guy, “Have a nice day!” It’s petty as fuck, but he doesn’t care, and the next three people in line chuckle at it, so he figures it’s worth showing his passive aggressive side a little bit.

The group of three girls are all together, and as they place their orders and pay, they assure him that the guy was a douche, and it sucks that they ran out of the stuff to make the drink, but it’s not like Keith can control that. Keith appreciates the solidarity and feels a little better.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone get out of line, and although usually he would feel nothing but relief, his heart sinks when he realizes who it is. It brings his mood down a little bit, but he tries not to punish the rest of his customers for things that aren’t their fault, and remains as pleasant as possible.

No more than five minutes later, Strawberry Banana Smoothie Guy gives up and leaves.

Eventually the rush ends, and the second Lance comes back, Keith makes a break for it to clock out for lunch.

He didn’t get a chance to pack anything before leaving the house, so he doesn’t have anything to eat, but he’s not that hungry anyway. He heads toward the benches outside to get some fresh air and probably stare at his phone for the next half hour.

Halfway through his break, his phone rings with a call from his mom. He answers with a weary, “Hey, mom.”

“Hey, kid,” she says, concern evident in her voice. “You sound low.”

Keith sighs deeply. “I got called into work today.”

“On your day off?”

“Yep.” He leans back against the bench and tilts his head back to soak up the limited fall sunshine.

“Didn’t you request today off? I thought they approved it.”

“They did,” he explains, still feeling a bit cranky about the whole thing. “But someone didn’t push the request through the system or something, so whoever made the schedule didn’t see it. So I got the world’s most annoying wake-up call this morning.”

His mother sighs on the other side of the phone. “Oh, Keith. I’m sorry. I know how much you were looking forward to today.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll find a better job soon. Just keep your head up. Would it help if I were to visit you at work? Maybe bring you some lunch?”

The idea of seeing his mom earlier than planned perks him up. “Well I’m on my lunch now, so you don’t need to bring me anything, but yeah. It would be nice to see you.”

“It would.” Keith can hear the smile in her voice now. “I was supposed to meet with a colleague at a place down the street, but I’m sure we can meet there instead. Around 3:30. Will you still be there?”

“I’ll be here,” he says. It’s an hour before his shift ends, so if they time it well, they should be ready to go at the same time. “See you soon.”

He hangs up the phone feeling much lighter than before. That feeling carries him through the end of his lunch break and into the afternoon.

By about three o’clock he’s pretty much over it. Rolo has disappeared into the back to finish pulling whatever needs to be defrosted for tomorrow and making new batches of sauces and whipped cream. His shift ends in half an hour, so Keith knows that Nyma, their closer, won’t bother showing her face in the front of house before Rolo leaves. It irritates him to no end that she gets away with clocking in and wasting everyone’s time for the first hour and a half of her shift, but again, the management is useless.

Luckily, since it’s a Wednesday afternoon in late October and the weather has started getting colder, they’re not so busy that Keith can’t take a few minutes to catch a breather. He and Lance are even both able to take their last fifteen-minute breaks of the day back-to-back without either person feeling overwhelmed during the time they have to work alone.

At 3:30 on the dot, Lance nudges him a little too hard to get his attention and sends waggly eyes toward the door. Keith glances over and sees his favorite customer just as he’s entering the building.

Contrary to earlier in the day when Keith had seen him sneak out of line, there’s currently no one else in the cafe, and the man is able to saunter right up to the counter.

God, he looks amazing, just like every other day. The suit he’s wearing today is dark blue and perfectly tailored to his body, though all of his suits are, and his silver hair is neat and styled in a way that makes him look ten years younger than he is. Keith wants to climb him like a tree.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” he says with his signature grin. Keith feels his palms start to sweat.

“Hey, Shiro,” he greets. “Good to have you back.”

Shiro tilts his head as if he’s trying to figure out what Keith means, but he apparently remembers before Keith can begin to stutter out something awkward about noticing him come in earlier.

“Oh, that. Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to just leave, but I got a message about something I needed to take care of right away, so I couldn’t stay.”

Keith breathes a sigh of relief that it wasn’t because Shiro was just fed up with waiting. “Sorry to hear that,” he remarks. “Hope everything’s okay.”

“Oh, it’s fine!” Shiro is quick to assure him. “Just work stuff. Luckily, I got a chance to come back.” Maybe it’s Keith’s imagination, but he likes to believe the wicked smirk Shiro’s shooting at him is meant to be flirtatious. “What would I have done without my afternoon pick-me-up?”

“You flatter me,” Keith flirts back. He knows Shiro means his daily sugar rush, but Keith takes the opportunities presented to him. “So, what can I get you today?”

Shiro studies the menu for a moment, just like he always does, and then, just like every other day, asks, “What’s good today? Any recommendations?”

“We have new muffins,” Keith says. “They’re really good.” Shiro is the only person who ever gets a real answer when he asks this question. To everyone else, he usually recommends an iced-whatever-is-seasonal-latte, because it’s easy to make and sounds like a real recommendation.

“I thought you didn’t like muffins?”

Keith’s heart thumps loudly at the knowledge that Shiro actually listens when he speaks. Most customers just like to talk about themselves without bothering to listen to what the people behind the counter actually have to say, but that’s part of why Shiro is his favorite customer. He always greets Keith, even when he’s at the bar instead of the register. He always listens, always takes Keith’s suggestions seriously, and is always, always kind and understanding, even when it seems like the cafe is close to burning to the ground.

“I don’t like most of our pastries,” he says. “Not enough flavor to waste the calories.” (He also likes that he can be totally honest with Shiro, and Shiro doesn’t take it as petty criticism of the job, but an honest opinion about a product he pays for.) “But the muffins are really good. They’re cinnamon apple spice with toasted oats on top.”

“Oh man, that does sound really good.” Shiro mulls it over for a minute and then says, “Alright. I’ll take one of those, and whatever beverage goes well with it.”

Keith smiles. Shiro is so easy-going. It’s so easy for him to make Keith’s day. “We have a caramel apple cider that’s probably sweet enough even for you. It makes my teeth hurt.”

Shiro throws his head back and laughs. It’s amazing, and Keith can feel himself blushing. He hopes Shiro can’t tell when he looks back at him. “Sounds perfect. You know me so well.”

This time Keith is _sure_ Shiro is flirting when he winks at him. It’s so sexy it should be illegal. Then again, Shiro is at least fifteen years older than him, maybe more, and has his life completely together, so the idea that he could actually be flirting with some deadbeat twenty-five-year-old who works as a barista is pretty laughable. Still, it’s nice to pretend that Shiro really is checking him out when he looks him up and down and smiles at him that way.

Keith rings him up for his total (he only charges him for a small even though he got a large, because Fight the Power) and leaves his post to personally warm Shiro’s muffin and make his drink. Lance could do it just fine, but Keith likes making Shiro’s order for him. It feels a little more personal that way.

Today, since they’re so dead at the moment, Keith even takes the initiative to bring Shiro’s muffin and drink to his table. The beaming smile he receives is more than worth it.

“Oh, thank you, Keith,” he says. “You didn’t need to bring it. I could have picked it up.”

Keith shrugs. “I know, but we’re not busy. It just was as easy this way.”

Shiro smiles at him again, setting Keith’s pulse pounding. “Well, I appreciate it. I ought to tell the manager to give you a raise.”

“Fat chance,” Keith laughs. He’s still at this job because it pays better than most of the other hourly jobs in town, but it’s not likely he’ll get a raise any time soon.

Keith must have been too busy talking to Shiro to notice the door chime, because a voice close to him makes him jump out of his skin.

“Fat chance of what?”

He whips his head around to see his mother looking at him with an amused eyebrow arched.

“Hi, Mom!”

He immediately goes for a hug and feels himself relax a little as she hugs him back.

“Hey, kid.” She releases him with a last firm squeeze and leans against Shiro’s table. “Shiro. I see you’ve met my son.”

Keith isn’t sure if Shiro actually looks paler than usual or if it’s just the tense expression on his face that makes him look that way. Either way, Keith thinks he feels the same.

“Krolia, it’s great to see you.”

Keith looks between them, something unpleasant bubbling in his stomach. He looks at Shiro. “You know my mom?”

“Well, I didn’t know she was your mom until now...”

“Shiro works for my client,” Krolia explains. “We meet every so often to touch base.”

Ah, of course. Keith has heard about Shiro before, he realizes, though Krolia has never called him by name when she’s talked about him.

“Ah,” he says. He’s not sure if there’s much more to say about that, so instead he asks, “Can I get you something? Cheese danish and a coffee?”

“Please and thank you,” she responds.

He nods and goes off to warm her danish and pour her coffee: large, dark, black. She doesn’t really need the caffeine, so she likes whichever one has the strongest flavor. She once asked if she could just get a cup full of espresso, but Keith drew the line at that — not just because the caffeine content might make even her heart explode, but because he was fairly certain an entire cup of espresso would cost something like twenty-four dollars, and he wasn’t willing to charge anyone that much for anything at the cafe.

After he drops off her orders at the table, he slinks back behind the counter and attempts to clean up as much as possible before the after-work crowd starts to filter in around four o’clock.

He can’t help but glance over to where Shiro and his mom are talking every so often. Of course, it figures that the one guy Keith can’t stop thinking about is friends with his mom, or at the very least, if not friends, friendly workplace associates. He’s just glad he never caved and told her about him because his Anti-Creeper Code prevents him from swooning over his customers outside of work.

It also confirms Keith’s suspicions about Shiro’s age and solidifies the idea that even if Shiro flirts, he could never be seriously interested in someone like Keith. He’s probably looking for something stable, someone who has their shit together and knows what they want out of life and doesn’t stay up until five in the morning sometimes just because he forgets to turn off the lamp and gets way too invested in online conspiracy threads about aliens and other paranormal occurrences.

His excitement over seeing his mom early is slightly dampened by his utterly smothered crush. He sighs, and for once Lance doesn’t ask him about it. Small mercies, he supposes.

Five minutes before the end of Keith’s shift, Shiro approaches the counter again. It looks like their meeting has wrapped up. Krolia is reading the book she keeps in her briefcase, which means she’s now just waiting for Keith to get off so they can head out together. That warms his heart. Shiro has gathered his things and looks like he’s just ordering something quickly to go.

“So, interesting connection we have, huh?” He gestures to the table he’s just vacated.

Keith nods and forces out a laugh. “Guess so.”

Shiro’s face turns worried for a moment before he says, “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Keith quickly responds. There’s no way he’s going to tell Shiro that it feels weird that he knows his mom because now he feels kinda guilty about fantasizing about Shiro’s thighs wrapped around his face. “Just realized I haven’t had anything to eat today. Kinda losing steam.”

Shiro’s concern only increases at that. “You’re off soon, right?”

“Three minutes, actually.”

“Oh, good.” Shiro’s concern seems to melt away. “I hate to ask, but do you think I could just get a big cup of water? I forgot my water bottle today.”

“No problem,” Keith says, and fills the biggest cup they have with ice water.

“Oh, and uh, another one of those apple muffins, if you’ve got one.”

He does; it’s the last one, and he’d been hoping to buy it for himself, but he tries not to let his disappointment show when he hands it over to Shiro.

“Glad you like them,” he says. Shiro smiles.

“I do, but this one’s not for me.” He sets it back down on the counter, takes his water, and begins to back away. “Happy birthday, Keith.”

Then he turns and walks away, and Keith is left staring dumbfounded at the door through which he left.

Keith can’t help but smile like a smitten fool, and he knows he must go bright red when he catches his mother smirking at him. Thankfully, Lance is long gone, having taken off sometime during his conversation with Shiro.

“Go clock out,” Krolia tells him. “I’ll take you home to change, and then we can go to dinner early.”

Keith smiles. “That sounds great.

On his way through dry storage to get to the time clock, he passes Nyma sitting on a step stool scrolling through Twitter on her phone.

“I’m out,” he says. “Lance already left.”

She sighs and doesn’t even bother to put her phone away as she moseys out to the front.

Keith swipes his muffin from the counter and munches on it on during the walk back to his apartment. His mom hooks her arm through his the entire way. He gets to spend a few more hours with her than originally planned, which is really nice.

He guesses it didn’t turn out to be such a bad birthday, after all.


End file.
